1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Television or radio programs, movies, newspaper or magazine articles and books all include content in the form of series where a number of installments are provided with a certain intent. Among television and radio programs, as examples, some series are composed of programs broadcast at the same time every day, while others have programs broadcast on the same day and at the same time every week. Some programs broadcast on an irregular schedule are also referred to as a “series”. For movies, a sequel would be one example of an installment in a series as referred to here. Information showing that content is an installment in a series is valuable in that such information can be used in various ways.
For example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2007-208365 discloses an information processing apparatus that focuses on “recurring programs”, which are programs broadcast on a recurring schedule such as at the same time every day or at the same time every week, out of various types of series and uses information which indicates a series and is included in EPG (Electronic Program Guide) data to distinguish whether a given program forms part of a series. This information processing apparatus has a function that updates user preference information when the given program forms part of a series using keywords included in both the EPG data of the given program and the EPG data of one or more previous installments of the same series as the given program that have already been broadcast.
However, the information processing apparatus disclosed in Publication No. 2007-208365 cannot be used in applications where information showing whether a program forms part of a series is not included in the EPG data. Here, an apparatus that extracts content in a series using content titles would be conceivable. In many cases, the titles of programs or other content in a series include a series name that is commonly assigned to the installments of the series. As one particular example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2002-27416 discloses a program reserving apparatus that is capable of extracting programs in a series when the titles of the installments in the series have been linked to a series name using “series expressions” indicating that programs belong to a series. This program reserving apparatus extracts programs as programs in a series when main titles, which are produced by excluding characters that match the series expressions set in advance from titles of programs, match one another.